Glass Half Full
by NorthOfNever
Summary: Includes Mirrors Have No Faces (Ponderings from Lois Lane), Through The Looking Glass (Ponderings from Clark Kent), The Glass Ceiling (Ponderings from Chloe Sullivan), and Window Pains (Ponderings from Lex Luthor). Introspectives.
1. Mirrors Have No Faces

Disclaimers: I honestly don't know that much about Lois' past, I just made a little reference to a past relationship to give this some depth. I don't own the characters mentioned, nor do I have any affiliation with or gain any profit from mentioning Velcro.

**Mirrors Have No Faces**

_Ponderings from Lois Lane_

I have a problem. I think I'm in love with a younger guy. Not a lot younger, but... okay, he's so naive, he just seems a lot younger. And he's a farmer! Probably wants nothing more out of life than cornfields and Sunday dinner. Not at all the kind of guy I ever envisioned myself with, but maybe that's the _real_ problem. I've met the exciting, dangerous guy... the thrills don't last that long, believe me. I've also met "the perfect guy," - you know the one - the guy who wants all the same things out of life, who knows you instantly because you're practically the female version of himself. At first, everything you say is a delightful surprise to him, because it's exactly what he thinks himself.

Which is exactly the problem. There's a point at which such symmetry kills any hope for true love. What's the point of loving somebody because they're exactly like you? Isn't that just one body away from total self-involvement? How do you grow from that? How do you challenge each other? How do you really know who you are beyond yourself, if your partner in life is like a reflection of you?

When two mirrors face each other, each shows what the other shows, because that's all there is. I've found mirrors. I once thought I'd found the man I was supposed to be with for the rest of my life, because he was my match in every detail. What I didn't yet understand is that relationships don't work because two people match. A key won't turn in a lock if the lock is cut identically to the key - it must be its complement. There must be peaks and valleys that fit together - that's how lives are knit to last.

If we both have the same high points and the same low points, then we collide at the highs and remain empty at the lows, and can therefore never fuse together. Never really join. Similarity to such a degree breeds superficiality, not intimacy. It's easy to fall for somebody who likes and wants and believes all of the same things that you do. It's also easy to put the soft side of two strips of Velcro together. The problem is, that both the relationship and the Velcro strips are just as easy to pull apart.

If the person I fall in love with requires no effort to love, no personal assessments to make when I think of myself spending my life with him, then neither of us has earned eternity together. Love is a commitment. A commitment is something that takes up time or energy - an obligation, requiring devotion, dedication - both of which are actions, and both take work. Someday, I want to be able to look at my husband and know that neither of us is who we were when we met. Sound weird? Sure. People are always talking about retaining their individuality, maintaining a sense of self. Whatever.

That works if we're clones of one another in the first place, but if we never had to put any work into seeing eye-to-eye, I think we'd stay stagnant. We'd never really grow up. We might grow old together, but we would have spent our years trying to keep our teeth sharp while gnawing on bananas. We'd need a little abrasiveness to stay vital. We'd need to take turns being the whetstone. We'd need differences. I hope to look back over my life and the man I spent it with and be able to say that we both had rough spots and that we smoothed each other out. That we became better people for having been together.

Velcro has the right idea. Hooks and loops. Empty spaces that need filling, and tenacious hooks that need some place to fill. Roughness and softness. Opposites. But at the core, they're made from the same thing, both rooted in the same tape. They just balance each other out, and because of that, they stick together.

Similarity to a degree is necessary for a base of attraction, but a mirror image is not what keeps a union strong. The only relevant application of mirrors in the idea of relationships is in the way human biology mirrors the necessity of complements. Man and woman - the most basic illustration of how complements fit together, and a pure allegory of the importance of it. Reproduction - two cells, one made to fit inside the other, each carrying only half of the program required to create a new life. That's how the progression of life is designed. At every stage, a life needs its complement.

And I think mine is Clark Kent.


	2. Through The Looking Glass

**Through The Looking Glass**

_Ponderings of Clark Kent_

The future has a funny way of hitting you in the face sometimes. People just walk into your life - sometimes they crash into it, actually, and for some reason they stick around even if you're not yourself at the time. Then when you are yourself… well, that's when it gets all messed up.

Like I said though - the future. I have a lot of questions about it. A lot of them come from unanswered questions about my past, things about my family, things I don't know if I'll be able to do or achieve. All I'm really sure of is that I'm not sure of anything - not in the future anyway. I suppose that's no different from anybody else, really.

Except that I don't know how many people meet their futures and know it. I didn't want to know - and I'm still not sure that I do - but there's something about this girl that came tumbling into my life that I just can't get over. She's - well, she's everything I _never_ wanted in a girl, actually. She's bold, kind of pushy - well, actually, she's really pushy. She really can't keep her nose out of other people's business. She kind of tramples over things, like she knows better or something. Like she's seen more. Well yeah, I guess she has, but why does that mean she can go stomping around in my life and telling me what to do all the time? As if there aren't enough people who think they know what I should do! I doesn't matter that I don't know myself, it's just… ugh, she's so bossy,

She has a comeback for everything. _Everything_. There is no out-quipping her, she's faster than a speeding bullet, or something. Sometimes I feel like she just flew right by me and I never even saw her coming - kind of like how she showed up in the first place - and then suddenly she's there again. She's sort of in and out, here and there - she shows up at the _worst_ possible times. That party for Chloe! Could that have been worse? The timing? Oh man, I just - okay, I promised myself I was gonna shut up about that. At least for now. Ahhh! She drives me crazy. I mean seriously, what kind of respectable girl goes walking into a really _obviously_ occupied bathroom ('cause yeah, steam and the sound of running water aren't dead giveaways or anything) and starts commenting on - well, nevermind about that either. And she stole my shirt! Grrr. She looked good in my shirt though… yeah, nevermind. Again. Actually, I haven't seen that shirt… I think she kept it. Ha - I bet she did. I wonder if she wears it to bed? Oh, shut up now… damn it.

You know what it is? She's just - too big for my life, as it is right now. She's too much. I get this feeling that I'll be seeing her again, someplace else, but - she doesn't really belong here. I don't know why she's here now, really. I mean yeah, she came because somebody she cared about died, or so we all thought, and she thought I'd have something for her that would help. I understand that. But this weird stuff happens. Suddenly having to go to high school again? _Here_? What is that about? I don't know what it is about her. Part of me likes having her around - even though she drives me nuts, really. One of these days I swear I'm gonna give her a comeback that'll just leave her speechless. At least I hope so, 'cause I'm getting kind of sick of getting my verbal butt kicked every time she opens her mouth. I'll catch up to her - ha, of course I will - someday she'll be the one saying "where the heck did you come from?"

See, that's the thing - I get this feeling about "someday" - like that's where she belongs - a "someday" that happens someplace else, when I've grown up and she - I hope - tames down. Okay, maybe I don't want her tame, just - yeah, I gotta study up on the banter if I'm gonna keep up with her. And I will be - keeping up with her, that is. I don't really understand why I have this feeling, it's sort of a gut reaction. I don't know what it is about her, she's just - unusual? Like me, in a way, but completely different. She throws me. She keeps me on my toes, not by getting herself into trouble or by even trying to get my attention, she just says this stuff, and then it's like - for a second, I get it. And then she steals my shirt. But that's okay, she can keep it.

I think I'll get it back someday.


	3. The Glass Ceiling

**The Glass Ceiling**

_Ponderings from Chloe Sullivan_

I have superpowers. Oh, come on - stifle the mock astonishment. Why should it surprise you so much if I did? This is Smallville, after all - land of the weird, home of the strange - and being the local authority on the "Wall of Weird" material that runs rampant in this… no, not leafy little hamlet… I need a different descriptor, something not so done to death… Cow town? So cliché… Sleepy little burg? Ugh, let's table characterizations - Smallville epitomizes them all. Except that it doesn't - which is why superpowers should be no surprise to you - come on, I know you've been following the news. You are big enough to admit to reading the _Torch_, aren't you? Yeah okay, no need to be too scathing… not like I'm the editor or anything.

Whatever. So yeah. Superpowers. Me - I have them. Or at least one. No, I can't turn people into popsicles, and my ability to teleport seems to be on the fritz… wow, that would be useful at Lutho… nevermind. But I do have an unmatched ability to transform a perfectly healthy, natural boy/girl friendship into an episode of _My So-called Life_ in the blink of an eye. Why didn't that show last longer? Thank God for DVD sets. This way I can sympathetically watch Angela lust after Jordan Catalano over, and over, and over again - except she at least got the whole boiler-room experience. Sometimes I think I'd kill for a little boiler-room experience… except this being Smallville, I'd probably want to avoid rooms where things boil. Just seems like asking for trouble.

So yeah, back to my super-ability to alienate guys. One guy in particular, of course - don't raise that quizzical eyebrow at me, I know you know which guy I'm talking about. God knows why, though. Okay, _aside_ from the fact that he's prettier than basically anybody (including Lana! Heh heh heh… ahem) and he has those lips… even with that really weird haircut he had a couple of years ago (seriously? The bangs? I know the guys from _Queer Eye_ would have had a field day with him… oh, geez, run that thought through the mental dishwasher on "super-scrub"… uh huh), he's just… I don't know. Unshakeable. Like no matter what he does to me, or… uh… doesn't do… no matter what he says, despite the wildly bipolar duplicity he shows sometimes - okay, kind of a lot of the time - I can't stop letting my mind run down that dead-end road. And my heart blindly follows. How impaired it that? I _know_ wanting him is futile, and painful, and yeah, flat-out stupid, but I just _can't_ stop.

And then I do things. Not usually by own volition, to my credit. Or perhaps to my shame… I don't know. But it's almost always because some cosmically cruel twist of fate forced my hand - forced it very literally one time - and then there he is as always - the one really consistent thing about him - telling me he just doesn't feel that way. "Not yet," he said last time, which is - well, that's just crap. A load of grade-A fertilizer, which he obviously know something about, because he dumps it me often enough. _Not yet_? Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that's just guy-speak for "yeah, you kind of make me want to gag, but I don't want to burn this bridge in case you turn out hot next year…" or something.

Okay, you're right, that's probably not Clark's motivation for the "not yet" line (but don't tell me no other guy thinks that - it's a total string-along), 'cause he's such a "nice boy," but there's no chance of "yet" ever happening - you can just tell. Well, I can just tell. After all these years of "not yet" and the occasional "almost," I'm pretty much the authority on Clark Kent double-speak. "I just don't feel that way, Chloe. At least not yet." Translation: "I'm inexplicably hung up on Lana Lang, and when I finally spring myself from that trap I'm skipping right over you." Wow, it hurts to be so damn perceptive. That's one of my other superpowers. Here's the complete index:

1) Superhuman ability to create awkward tension (i.e. foot-in-mouth disease)

2) Superhuman ability to get inside people's heads and know what they're really saying (i.e. the truth is never out there)

3) Superhuman self-denial (i.e. the last shall be first, the first shall be last - unless you're me, then you're last either way)

4) Invisibility (i.e. stuck in the glare of the light shining off our illustrious Ms. Lang. And now Lois? The way he smiled at her…)

The worst part is, I don't know if he's even worth the trouble, and in the end he probably isn't. But, being awkward, perceptive, self-denying and invisible, I'll never get the chance to find out. I might get close, but some natural (or unnatural) disaster will inevitably intervene and I'll be where I always am. Looking around and wondering…

Where did he go?


	4. Window Pains

**Window Pains**

_Ponderings of Lex Luthor_

What would I be if I had no barriers? Most would contend that I don't. Those who would view me as the over-privileged son of an overindulgent father, never denied any luxury or convenience. What barriers exist for me? What obstacle can I not overcome with a forceful turn of phrase and a dollar sign?

Money affords the wealthy access to many, many things. I have resources, I'm certain, that I haven't even explored. They'll be there when I need them. Doors don't merely open for me, they appear. They appear because I force them to. Regrettably, it isn't a door that I need.

It's a window. Clarity. The ability to see into a place that even I can not yet enter.

The future.

More specifically, my future. In some ways I feel that the superficial perception of me is the closest to the truth - that I am nothing more than the over-privileged son of an overindulgent father. Though I would most likely define my father's indulgences with more hollowness than an outsider would, and less venom. I know that the environment I was raised in has wrought something strange in me. A disease peculiar and unique to the children of the upper crust. We are raised with skewed perception.

Though of course, everyone else is as well. There truly is no such thing as normalcy. There's no equator banding the center of the spectrum of human behavior. There are extremes, there are variances, but no textbook definitions of perfect human traits. Not that anyone would agree with those criteria if they existed, and they can't agree for the same reason that those criteria can not exist. Human behavior is an anomaly, even though there truly is no norm for it to deviate from. So yes, I suppose that's an oxymoronic statement. It's organic in its development, not formulaic.

People are, in truth, creatures of perception. We are not simply viewed through or misinterpreted by perception, we _are_ perception, at the core. Products of the way we view the world. The world will present itself in whatever way it sees fit, but the way you see it - the way _I_ have learned to see it - that's completely internalized. It's a matter of what you choose to believe about what you see, hear, taste, smell, touch - the way you perceive these things is influenced by the world that presents them to you, but I believe there is still a measure of individual control in how you filter that world.

For example, twins - genetically identical - raised in the same home, by the same people, perhaps in the same room - how often does it occur that two people, even those who are biologically programmed to be similar, can be complete opposites? Perception. It's like a fingerprint. Completely unique to the individual.

We all have to believe in what surrounds us, or we deny it - in any case, that's what truly makes us who we are. The way we've learned to react to the world, because of the way we've learned to see the world. The way we've come to reflect the world, and likewise the world reflecting back on us. It's a circle of perceptive influence.

So, it is perception that drives me to seek windows instead of doors. I've seen the world of my present, I've stepped through windows into my past. I've seen what my perceptions of things - some of which were forced on me, some of which I misconstrued, some of which I allowed to be conditioned away for a time - I've seen how they've made me who I am now. But the things I see today… the things I perceive and thus believe or deny - I have no way of knowing how those things will reflect on the world. How _I_ will reflect on the world.

Will I be remembered as the rich man's son? Or will I one day have a window to look through that leads back here, and finally see how my perception of this time and place has forged me into what I'll be then?

Sometimes, when I focus hard enough on looking through that window, I can almost see it. That's usually when I almost decide that I don't want to know, because there's something thicker than the typical uncertainty looming beyond it.

And that, I can already feel.


End file.
